 They were mapped by the New Zealand party (1957–58) of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition and named for Professor R. S. Allan of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.According to William A. Cassidy, describing the 1976-1977 ANSMET meteorite collecting season, "Looking across the Mackay Glacier at the great sky-blue patches of ice beyond Mount Brooke, we were looking for the first time at ice that had a tremendous upstream collecting area.We were looking at Meteorite Heaven...